The Romance of Modern Chemistry

CHAPTER XI HOW FIRE IS MADE IN the forgoing chapter it has been said that the making of fire is one of the oldest achievements of the human race. So old is it that there is no trust- worthy evidence of any tribe which was ignorant of fire and its uses. There is nothing impossible in the supposition that there may have been such a tribe, but we have no proof. It should be remembered that man must have been familiar with fire on the large scale, even before he knew how to produce it himself; for we may presume that lightning and volcanic eruptions have always been features of life on the earth. Apart, however, from these exceptional manifestations, the primeval man must one day have discovered how to produce fire with the ordinary means at his disposal. The reader can imagine the amaze- ment and delight, perhaps the alarm, of the first human being who succeeded in making fire for himself, and of those who afterwards made an independent discovery of the same thing. How it was actually done we can only conjecture, but we shall probably get fairly near the true answer if we can discover the methods of making fire which have been practised among primitive tribes even in comparatively recent times. The ancients solved the problem of the original discovery of fire in a manner that has the merit of simplicity, even if it does not commend itself to the scientific mind of this 118